Musings on politics, science, religion, music, and life.

March 16, 2006

Why I am a New Order Mormon--Part II: Why I Joined the LDS Church

I joined the church because I came to believe that God
Himself had introduced His Son to the boy Joseph Smith in the Sacred
Grove. I believed this because I had
read and prayed about the Book of Mormon and received what I thought was a
witness from the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon was true. If the Book of Mormon was true, I reasoned,
then Joseph Smith was a true prophet who restored the New Testament church to
the earth. I could trust that his
revelations came from God and I could trust that conforming my life to those
revelations would yield blessings in this life and eternal life in the world to
come. All information that might cast
doubt on Joseph’s divine call or on the revelations he produced could be swept
aside as untrustworthy as it contradicted my “sure” witness that the Book of
Mormon was true.

As a
convert, of course, I did not always believe these things. I was raised
in various strands of
Protestantism. I moved three times as a
child. Each time we moved, my parents
would shop for a church in which they felt comfortable. As a young boy
I attended with my family a
charismatic Christian church. Later, we
were members of a large Presbyterian congregation. When I was 12 years
old, I was baptized a
member of a different Presbyterian church. As a teen, my family started
attending a Lutheran church. My family was not overly religious but we
attended church pretty regularly and my parents taught me from a young
age to
pray every night before bedtime. We
prayed at mealtime, and I was always taught that the one essential
doctrine of
Christianity was that Jesus is the Son of God and belief in Him brings
eternal
life. Beyond that, everything was open
to debate and discussion. I was taught
that one could not “know” that the Bible and what it taught about Jesus
was
true--it required faith. Faith would
come by hearing the word, reading the Bible, and trying to live the
teachings
of Jesus.

When I
went to college, I stopped going to church, but my interest in religion
intensified. I majored in history and
minored in religious studies. I studied
all the world’s major religions and focused on religious themes in my
historical studies. I also explored the
ideas of nonreligious philosophers. Ayn
Rand’s writings had a particularly profound influence on me. So I was perhaps an unlikely candidate for
conversion.

But convert
I did. In the fall of my junior year, I
was taking a class on the early American republic. I was given the assignment to write a short
paper on one of the subjects covered in one of the books the class was
reading. I chose to write on
Mormonism. I went to the university
library (it happens to be one of the largest in the country) the day before the
paper was due (did I mention I have a tendency to procrastinate?). I surveyed the hundreds of books lining the
shelves from floor to ceiling in the section on Mormonism and grabbed the
thinnest one I could find. What of the Mormons?it was called, by
some guy named Gordon Hinckley. Never
heard of him. A quick survey of the
book’s contents revealed that it would be sufficient for my needs--short enough
for me to read that evening, but with enough content for me to crank out a
3-4-page paper if I pulled an all-nighter, which is just what I did.

I
finished the paper with an hour to spare, but my inquiry into Mormonism had
just begun. I returned to the library
and started reading other books on Mormonism, some by folks whose names would
later become familiar to me--Talmage, Grant, McKay, McConkie, Richards; others
by folks with a decidedly different perspective on the faith--Brodie, Decker,
Tanner, et al. I also picked up a copy
of the Book of Mormon and Doctrine & Covenants and started reading.

Around
the same time, I became smitten with a certain young co-ed. We became
friends and then began dating. I learned that she was Mormon. This
fact, shall we say, gave me added
incentive to continue my research into the church. Many of the stories
surrounding early
Mormonism seemed rather incredible to me. But I was nonetheless
impressed by the number of intelligent, educated,
and apparently normal people who were numbered in Mormonism’s ranks. So
I asked myself, are Joseph Smith’s claims
any more incredible than the claims of the Bible? If I can believe the
Bible, why not the Book of
Mormon?

Although
at first I found Mormonism’s claims ridiculous, upon further reflection
I
became open to at least the possibility that things had happened the
way Joseph
Smith said they did. After much reading
and several discussions with my girlfriend (who would later become my
wife), I
found myself torn--the part of me that was skeptical of all organized
religions
resisted, the part of me with faith in God thought there was the
possibility
that it might be true. I related to
Joseph Smith’s plight as described in the 1838 account of the First
Vision, in
which he comes to realize that an appeal to the Bible was not going to
tell him
which church he should join. Discussion
and study were not going to resolve the issue, so I decided to do as
Joseph did
and as Moroni instructed--I decided to pray. And I received an answer
to my prayer. I felt the burning in the bosom, indeed a burning from
head to toe. I felt as if I had been brought into the
divine presence—I had, as it were, an encounter with the “numinous,” to
use the
language of Rudolf Otto. I was filled
with joy. I had my answer—the Book of
Mormon was true; Joseph was a prophet; I would be baptized.

I was an
enthusiastic convert and was soon put to work as a stake missionary. I continued to educate myself on church
doctrine and history. I read most of the
Journal of Discoursesand the
teachings of all the prophets. I
devoured books from FARMS and over the years grew a substantial LDS
library. I read almost everything by
Hugh Nibley, and Jack Welch became something of a hero to me. My distrust of organized religion melted away
and I shrugged off what I considered shrill attacks from critics. I saw the church as at once safe and
liberating. Safe because of the
certainty of the doctrines and pronouncements from the pulpit I believed were
inspired. Liberating because the
church’s scriptures exalted the notion of individual freedom, the power to
choose.

I got married nine months after my baptism and my wife and I went to the temple
to make it eternal three months later. We both served faithfully in various leadership and teaching callings
over the years. For more than 16 years,
I considered myself a true-believing Latter-day Saint.